represented a village
wedding rather laboriously copied from Greuze's
picture. It was rejected. When Fougeres heard of the fatal decision,
he did not fall into one of those fits of epileptic self-love to which
strong natures give themselves up, and which sometimes end in
challenges sent to the
director or the secretary of the Museum, or
even by threats of
assassination. Fougeres quietly fetched his
canvas,
wrapped it in a
handkerchief, and brought it home, vowing in his heart
that he would still make himself a great
painter. He placed his
picture on the easel, and went to one of his former masters, a man of
immensetalent,--to Schinner, a kind and patient artist, whose triumph
at that year's Salon was complete. Fougeres asked him to come and
criticise the rejected work. The great
painter left everything and
went at once. When poor Fougeres had placed the work before him
Schinner, after a glance, pressed Fougeres' hand.
"You are a fine fellow," he said; "you've a heart of gold, and I must
not
deceive you. Listen; you are fulfilling all the promises you made
in the
studios. When you find such things as that at the tip of your
brush, my good Fougeres, you had better leave colors with Brullon, and
not take the
canvas of others. Go home early, put on your cotton
night-cap, and be in bed by nine o'clock. The next morning early go to
some government office, ask for a place, and give up art."
"My dear friend," said Fougeres, "my picture is already condemned; it
is not a
verdict that I want of you, but the cause of that
verdict."
"Well--you paint gray and sombre; you see nature being a crape veil;
your
drawing is heavy, pasty; your
composition is a medley of Greuze,
who only redeemed his defects by the qualities which you lack."
While detailing these faults of the picture Schinner saw on Fougeres'
face so deep an expression of
sadness that he carried him off to
dinner and tried to
console him. The next morning at seven o'clock
Fougeres was at his easel
working over the rejected picture; he warmed
the colors; he made the corrections suggested by Schinner, he touched
up his figures. Then, disgusted with such patching, he carried the
picture to Elie Magus. Elie Magus, a sort of Dutch-Flemish-Belgian,
had three reasons for being what he became,--rich and avaricious.
Coming last from Bordeaux, he was just starting in Paris, selling old
pictures and living on the
boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Fougeres, who
relied on his palette to go to the baker's,
bravely ate bread and
nuts, or bread and milk, or bread and cherries, or bread and
cheese,
according to the seasons. Elie Magus, to whom Pierre offered his first
picture, eyed it for some time and then gave him fifteen francs.
"With fifteen francs a year coming in, and a thousand francs for
expenses," said Fougeres, smiling, "a man will go fast and far."
Elie Magus made a
gesture; he bit his thumbs, thinking that he might
have had that picture for five francs.
For several days Pierre walked down from the rue des Martyrs and
stationed himself at the corner of the
boulevard opposite to Elie's
shop,
whence his eye could rest upon his picture, which did not
obtainany notice from the eyes of the passers along the street. At the end
of a week the picture disappeared; Fougeres walked slowly up and
approached the dealer's shop in a lounging manner. The Jew was at his
door.
"Well, I see you have sold my picture."
"No, here it is," said Magus; "I've framed it, to show it to some one
who fancies he knows about
painting."
Fougeres had not the heart to return to the
boulevard. He set about
another picture, and spent two months upon it,--eating mouse's meals
and
working like a galley-slave.
One evening he went to the
boulevard, his feet leading him fatefully
to the dealer's shop. His picture was not to be seen.
"I've sold your picture," said Elie Magus,
seeing him.
"For how much?"
"I got back what I gave and a small interest. Make me some Flemish
interiors, a lesson of
anatomy, landscapes, and such like, and I'll
buy them of you," said Elie.
Fougeres would fain have taken old Magus in his arms; he regarded him
as a father. He went home with joy in his heart; the great
painterSchinner was
mistaken after all! In that
immense city of Paris there
were some hearts that beat in
unison with Pierre's; his
talent was
understood and appreciated. The poor fellow of twenty-seven had the
innocence of a lad of sixteen. Another man, one of those distrustful,
surly artists, would have noticed the diabolical look on Elie's face
and seen the twitching of the hairs of his beard, the irony of his
moustache, and the
movement of his shoulders which betrayed the
satisfaction of Walter Scott's Jew in swindling a Christian.
Fougeres marched along the
boulevard in a state of joy which gave to
his honest face an expression of pride. He was like a schoolboy
protecting a woman. He met Joseph Bridau, one of his comrades, and one
of those
eccentricgeniuses destined to fame and sorrow. Joseph
Bridau, who had, to use his own expression, a few sous in his pocket,
took Fougeres to the Opera. But Fougeres didn't see the ballet, didn't
hear the music; he was imagining pictures, he was
painting. He left
Joseph in the middle of the evening, and ran home to make sketches by
lamp-light. He
invented thirty pictures, all reminiscence, and felt
himself a man of
genius. The next day he bought colors, and
canvases
of various dimensions; he piled up bread and
cheese on his table, he
filled a water-pot with water, he laid in a
provision of wood for his
stove; then, to use a
studio expression, he dug at his pictures. He
hired several models and Magus lent him stuffs.
After two months' seclusion the Breton had finished four pictures.
Again he asked
counsel of Schinner, this time adding Bridau to the
invitation. The two
painters saw in three of these pictures a servile
imitation of Dutch landscapes and
interiors by Metzu, in the fourth a
copy of Rembrandt's "Lesson of Anatomy."
"Still imitating!" said Schinner. "Ah! Fougeres can't manage to be
original."
"You ought to do something else than
painting," said Bridau.
"What?" asked Fougeres.
"Fling yourself into literature."
Fougeres lowered his head like a sheep when it rains. Then he asked
and
obtained certain useful advice, and retouched his pictures before
taking them to Elie Magus. Elie paid him twenty-five francs
apiece. At
that price of course Fougeres earned nothing; neither did he lose,
thanks to his sober living. He made a few excursions to the
boulevardto see what became of his pictures, and there he underwent a singular
hallucination. His neat, clean
paintings, hard as tin and shiny as
porcelain, were covered with a sort of mist; they looked like old
daubs. Magus was out, and Pierre could
obtain no information on this
phenomenon. He fancied something was wrong with his eyes.
The
painter went back to his
studio and made more pictures. After
seven years of continued toil Fougeres managed to
compose and execute
quite passable work. He did as well as any artist of the second class.
Elie bought and sold all the
paintings of the poor Breton, who earned
laboriously about two thousand francs a year while he spent but twelve
hundred.
At the Exhibition of 1829, Leon de Lora, Schinner, and Bridau, who all
three occupied a great position and were, in fact, at the head of the
art
movement, were filled with pity for the
perseverance and the
poverty of their old friend; and they caused to be admitted into the
grand salon of the Exhibition, a picture by Fougeres. This picture,
powerful in interest but derived from Vigneron as to
sentiment and
from Dubufe's first manner as to
execution, represented a young man in
prison, whose hair was being cut around the nape of the neck. On one
side was a
priest, on the other two women, one old, one young, in
tears. A sheriff's clerk was
reading aloud a
document. On a
wretchedtable was a meal,
untouched. The light came in through the bars of a
window near the ceiling. It was a picture fit to make the bourgeois
shudder, and the bourgeois shuddered. Fougeres had simply been
inspired by the
masterpiece of Gerard Douw; he had turned the group of
the "Dropsical Woman" toward the window, instead of presenting it full